Passing Lane

Updated July 9, 2001 12:42 a.m. ET

By John Fund. This article originally appeared on OpinionJournal.com.

Sometimes the best measure of a reporter's effectiveness is the virulence of the attacks against him. Case in point: Last month, left-wing groups ganged up on two dissenters from the liberal media orthodoxy: ABC's contrarian reporter John Stossel and a former ABC colleague of his, Brit Hume, who is now Fox News's Washington bureau chief.